My day starts like a film cliche, with me, the hapless city dweller, getting lost amid the rolling hills of Shropshire. I drive down a near-vertical road dubbed “Dangerous Hill”, get stuck behind a tractor and stared down by some cows before being forced to ask a smirking farmer if my satnav really is right to send me through a shut farm gate.

It turns out it is and, shortly after, I pull up in The Bridges pub car park, where my guide for the day, Craig Jones, is waiting with a mountain bike and a thermos of hot coffee. Craig runs Muddy Cwtch (“cwtch” meaning cuddle in Welsh) with his partner Charlotte Griffin, a nutritionist, who’s provided the day’s healthy meals and snacks. They grew up in Shropshire, got sucked into London for work but are now returning to their roots to offer mountain bike days and weekenders.

We’re joined by a friend of mine, whom I don’t get to see enough of these days, as we both have young kids and live miles apart. Riding around beautiful English countryside seemed like a great chance to catch up, away from the usual infant interruptions. She’s a more experienced mountain biker than me, a relative beginner at riding off-road – especially the narrow tyre-width, single-track trails which will make up some of today’s route.

We practise some basic skills in the car park, then Craig shows us our 17-mile loop on the OS map. The distance doesn’t sound much, especially if you’re used to road-cycling figures, but he tells me you tick off miles much more slowly on a mountain bike and the close contours on the map suggest there are a good few hills to conquer en route.

We then hop into Craig’s truck to drive up the hill to our starting point. This may seem like a cop-out but it can kill the day to start with such a brutal hill climb.

Our ride starts up on the Long Mynd, a stunning moorland plateau that runs through the Shropshire hills. We can see green fields and russet heaths for miles around and I’m blown away by how beautiful it is. Millions of years ago there were volcanoes here; now it’s an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and it’s easy to see why.

It had rained relatively recently, so the ground was soft and spongy with some good puddles to dodge. Or, in my case, splash through with childlike enthusiasm – though little foresight for how I’d be riding in wet shorts for the rest of the day. We ride down hills, bounce over tree roots and pass through fields of ponies, sheep and lambs.

The highlight view is the limestone escarpment of Wenlock Edge, which rears up like a mountain ridge that wouldn’t look out of place in the Alps. It inspired the works of AE Housman and LS Lowry, among others. We dwell long enough to have a protein ball from the stash Charlotte’s prepared. They’re tasty and a welcome homemade alternative to the gels and power foods cyclists use for energy but which I always find quite sickly.

We climb a few hills, one in such tough, sticky mud we have to dismount, and ride down some very fun single-track, with gorse bushes, steep drops and deadpan, grass-chewing sheep in our path adding to the excitement and atmosphere.

We have lunch on a bench by an actual babbling brook in the Carding Mill valley. Charlotte has packed us veggie burrito wraps with black beans, quinoa and peppers, a squash salad and hard-boiled eggs, all of which go down a treat. We finish off with a takeaway espresso at the National Trust cafe, where I catch my reflection and see my face is splattered in mud, which makes me look as though I have a funny dark-brown strain of chickenpox.

We ride through the pretty town of Church Stretton, our only real bit of road riding all day, before making our way up through a pine forest, its verges dotted with brightly coloured spring flowers. I’m not sure if the hills are getting tougher or my legs are getting more tired but I’m starting to feel the climbs, until a buzzard circling overhead provides a welcome distraction.

The woods deliver us back to the Long Mynd and a busy gliding club. We get a wonderful close-up view of a plane being towed for take-off, while snacking on figs, grapes and apricot flapjacks, then enjoy a gentle ride to the plateau’s highest point at Pole Bank. There, we chat to some friendly ramblers. We’ve seen quite a few today, but only a couple of other mountain bikers. Craig tells me it’s not really a mountain bike honeypot, as most riders go to Wales or specialised trail centres.

While I can see the appeal of riding trails designed purely for mountain biking, and I did like the more technical single-track that we rode a lot, that wasn’t the highlight of my day. What I loved the most was riding around this striking and hugely varied landscape, which cleared my head in the most amazing way.

Could we have hired bikes locally and found a route online to follow ourselves? Possibly, but having a guide took so much of the hassle out of the day. And not having to worry about directions at every turn meant we could concentrate on enjoying the riding and scenery, while chatting along the way.

Muddy Cwtch could have organised our accommodation for the night, and many of its guests come for the whole weekend, often riding for the second day, too, but we have to get back to our families. So, after a quick blast down a stony hill to The Bridges pub car park where we started, I head off with a blueberry recovery smoothie and delicious salmon, potato and pea frittata made by Charlotte, feeling as mentally refreshed and physically nourished as I can remember feeling in a very long time.

• The trip was provided by Muddy Cwtch (muddycwtch.com). A day’s guided mountain biking, including food and bike hire, costs £75. A weekender, including skill training, bike hire, Saturday and Sunday rides, food and two nights’ private accommodation costs £250pp (£225 excluding bike hire). Pick-ups from Shrewsbury station can be arranged